Poland sets its November renewable auctions, solar and onshore wind take the largest pool

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Poland has fixed the dates for its 2026 renewable auctions. The President of URE, the national energy regulator, formally announced seven regular auction sessions on 22 September, to be held between 2 and 10 November. Across those sessions the state will contract support for slightly more than 76 TWh of renewable electricity at a maximum value of nearly PLN 24.9bn, which makes this one of the larger auction windows the market has seen.

Solar PV and onshore wind carry most of that. The two technologies share 64.5 TWh worth just over PLN 17.9bn, the bulk of the total. Within that allocation the largest single pool is a joint basket for larger solar and wind projects above 1 MW, covering 53.25 TWh. That basket is the final session of the year, auction AZ/7/2026 on 10 November, and it is where utility-scale operators will compete most directly.

The auctions run on the existing rules, which means bids are ranked on price alone, and only new installations may compete this year. Reference-price ceilings set by the ministry cap what a project can bid, so the competition sits below a known upper bound rather than in an open market. For an operator that has a project at the right stage of development, the auction offers a long-term, price-based contract that removes a large part of the merchant exposure a plant would otherwise carry.

Qualification is where timing bites. URE issues the admission certificate within 30 days of a complete application, and an application is left without examination if it lacks grid connection conditions or a connection agreement, or a valid building permit where one is required, or if it arrives less than 14 days before the session it targets. Prequalification runs year-round rather than opening with each announcement, so a developer that waits for the session notice to start assembling documents will not make the November window.

For operators weighing the auction against a corporate PPA, the decision turns on the same variables either way. A fixed auction contract narrows negative price risk and merchant price risk but locks the project to a single revenue basis for its support period, while a PPA can be shaped around a specific offtaker and combined with a route-to-market strategy that keeps some upside. Reading the two paths against a project's own capture profile, curtailment exposure and balancing costs is what separates a competitive bid from one that leaves value on the table.

SEMT gives operators the market intelligence to make that call, from capture-price and PPA benchmarks across European markets to origination and revenue monitoring in one place. If you would like to see how a Polish project's auction and PPA options compare on current market data, you can start with a free SEMT account at https://synertics.io/signup/ or reach us at info@synertics.io.